It isn’t every day that you hear about a 13 year old girl who is such a fan of the NY Giants football team that she wants her bat mitzvah party to have a football theme. Boys, perhaps. Girls, not so much. But to me, it indicated that the 13 year old girl is an independent thinker and has a great deal of confidence at an age when many girls are insecure and just want to look and act like each other. I admire and wholeheartedly support her doing her own thing. Very cool.

This cake was made for that young woman, who is named Lexa (Shayna is her middle name), for her bat mitzvah. The cake is a life sized helmet cake, made from delicious, fudgy chocolate cake, and filled with altering layers of Oreo filling and Nutella buttercream. The whole thing was covered with a dark chocolate ganache. Everything is edible, even the facemask (although you probably wouldn’t want to eat it because the gum paste used to make the mask has hardened, so it can stand up). At the event space, Lexa’s mom surrounded the cake with tall thin taper candles placed on the board (the football field). The cake was then used in the candle lighting ceremony, in which Lexa called up family and friends to help her light each of her 13 candles.

This helmet wasn’t large enough to feed a whole party (the helmet feeds 30-40 people, depending upon how it is cut), so I had baked additional sheet cakes to ensure everyone got some cake. One sheet cake was chocolate with Oreo filling and chocolate ganache, like the helmet, and the other was vanilla with raspberry swiss meringue buttercream filling and vanilla bean swiss meringue buttercream on the outside.

I received a call from Lexa and her mom the day after the event, and they and their guests were still raving about the cake and thrilled at how realistic it had looked and how good it had tasted. They told me that one of the guests at the party had suggested sending a photo to the NY Giants! Others didn’t want to cut into the cake, but Lexa and her family finally did, so they could have their cake and eat it too.

Mazel Tov, Lexa! Put that independent thinking to good use in your life. I expect to hear great things from you! Touchdown!!!